Micron Technology Inc president Mark Adams said prices of computer memory chips have probably hit a low after a slump that caused losses at three of the four largest companies in the industry.
In December, the Boise, Idaho-based company, the only remaining US maker of dynamic random access memory (DRAM), reported its second straight quarterly loss as product prices fell amid slowing personal computer orders.
“I don’t think DRAM goes down from here,” Adams said in an interview ahead of a company analyst day in Scottsdale, Arizona. “It’s starting to feel like a stable market.”
Chipmakers are struggling to match supply with demand in the market for memory in personal computers, where plants take years to come online and cannot be shut down cheaply.
Underlining that, last year industry sales dropped 26 percent to US$29.2 billion, according to an estimate by market researcher Gartner Inc. That followed a 72 percent surge in 2010.
Adams was promoted to company president last week following the death of former chief executive officer Steve Appleton in an airplane accident. Former chief operating officer Mark Durcan has reversed his retirement decision and is taking on Appleton’s position.
The industry is inching closer to Appleton’s vision of a more stable business populated by few producers, Adams said.
Only the Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung Electronics Co, the largest maker of computer memory, which also gets income from mobile phones, flat panel displays and home electronics, has remained profitable.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained